


Nothing More or Less

by dervish_and_banges



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Harry Potter References, M/M, janto, set in late season 2, some fluff some plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 04:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17859899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dervish_and_banges/pseuds/dervish_and_banges
Summary: Ianto finds a mysterious mirror.





	Nothing More or Less

It was odd. An old, tall mirror stood in Jack’s office that hadn’t been there before, but it didn’t look alien. With his years of experience interacting with alien artefacts, not to mention cataloguing them, Ianto felt he should know. The tip of the mirror’s worn, golden frame almost scraped the ceiling, and Ianto felt short in comparison. He stepped closer, running a hand along the ornate edges. Near the top of the frame, out of his reach, scratches that looked like they had once been words or symbols had mostly faded away. He squinted at them, but he dropped his eyes down when he thought he saw a flash of something different in the mirror.  
He whirled around, but no one was there, and everything he seemed in order. Ianto turned back to the mirror and peered at his reflection. He startled when a small wound appeared on one side of his forehead. Ianto reached a hand towards his head, but felt nothing. His hand in the mirror did not follow. As he watched his reflection, or what once had been his reflection, he recognized a gunshot wound. He took a small step backwards. If this showed the future, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.  
But as he watched a moment longer, his reflection started to glow, surrounded by a light as golden as the mirror’s frame but much, much brighter. As it receded, Ianto was still there, but his wound was healing, the blood fading away. It looked exactly like when Jack healed, he realized, but it was still Ianto—no, wait, it was Ianto, _and_ Jack. Ianto whipped around again as Jack appeared in the mirror, but wasn’t entirely surprised to find nothing there. It had seemed that Jack had walked in from the side of the mirror, not from the door behind them. As he turned back to watch, Jack in the mirror walked to stand beside Ianto in the mirror, and gently took his hand. Ianto wasn’t sure if it was the strange mirror playing tricks or just the familiarity of the gesture, but Ianto was sure he could feel the pressure of Jack’s hand in his. He couldn’t help a glance down, but knew what he would find: an empty hand.  
He looked back to the mirror. The light around his reflection glowed a little again, surrounding Jack, too. The reflections stayed that way, blinking back at Ianto, who continued to watch.  
At some point, Ianto pulled up Jack’s desk chair and sat. The mirror played more scenes for him, making them slightly less gruesome than they would be in real life. The mirror versions of Ianto and Jack suffered fatal wounds, and stood back up again. Pondering if this was anything to do with the future, Ianto gave into the thoughts he often tried to keep away. He wondered if Jack was an anomaly, or if it could happen. If becoming immortal had been possible for Jack, it had to be possible for others. Jack had grudgingly given Ianto a few more details of his “accident” over time. He had been told that it was a terrifying race of robotic, unfeeling aliens that had killed Jack the first time. And he knew that Jack’s revival, so to speak, had something to do with the Doctor, another old friend, and a spaceship. Well, if it was alien tech that had done it, Torchwood could likely encounter it again.  
Ianto knew, logically, that he should never want to be immortal. He knew that Jack didn’t want it. He knew it was lonely, and deeply sad. He tried not to think about it. But something in him yearned for more time. Every moment spent with Jack felt impossibly short. He tried to think he might have a lifetime of moments, but Ianto Jones didn’t even expect to grow old.  
But this...Ianto tried to instinctively crush hope, but all he could do was continue to stare at the mirror, where he and Jack were alive—so alive.  
Ianto usually kept perfect track of time, but he wasn’t sure how long he had been staring, chin in his hands, when he was interrupted.  
“You know, vanity isn’t good for you,” Jack said, softly, from the doorway. Ianto jumped, standing from his chair.  
“I’ve...decided to start with the man in the mirror,” Ianto joked, deadpan. “Thought I’d get a good look at him.” He thought about moving the chair back to where it belonged, but he wondered if Jack could see what was in the mirror. If he hadn’t seen what Ianto had seen already, then he wasn’t sure he wanted Jack to see it. He remained standing in front of it.  
“Might want to pick a better mirror,” Jack replied.  
“What’s it doing here? You...haven’t mentioned it.”  
Jack shut the door behind him. “I meant to store it somewhere, but hadn’t yet. I hid it in here for now.”  
“Right,” Ianto said, not sure what to ask next. “Hid it from who?”  
Jack sighed. “All of you. I didn’t want any of you staring into it. It can mess with your head.”  
Jack’s voice wasn’t accusatory, but Ianto averted his eyes for a moment. So it had been preying on his thoughts. Could that mean it didn’t still hold the future? Objects that showed the future usually messed with a person’s head. They’d had to lock up things like that before. “So you know what it is, then?”  
Jack walked closer to Ianto and leaned a hand on his desk. Ianto hoped he didn’t see what was in the mirror, but Jack wasn’t looking at it. “It’s called The Mirror of Erised.” Ianto played with the word for a moment in his head. _Erised._  
“What does it do?”  
“Give a guess.”  
Ianto had an urge to look back into the mirror. His eyes slid sideways, but he didn’t turn around. “Possible futures?” he ventured.  
Jack smiled sadly, and shook his head. “No. It doesn’t show anything real.” He considered his words for a moment. “Unless you’re really lucky, maybe.”  
“What does it show?” Ianto asked, the flicker of hope deep inside him falling and then rising again.  
“Erised,” Jack said, “Desire. Specifically, one’s deepest, truest desire, whether you know it yourself or not. I didn’t want you all finding it, but it seems you made it here before I did.” He picked up the now less-than-lukewarm coffee that sat on his desk, which Ianto had brought in earlier, and took a sip.  
“Why didn’t you want us to know?” Ianto trusted Jack, but he almost wished Gwen was here to chew him out about not telling them, because they were a team and Jack should trust them. Ianto was a little more possessive about that trust, at least lately. He didn’t say it, but part of him meant, “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
“It’s dangerous.” Ianto gave him a look. “Not in the way we’re used to dealing with,” Jack continued. “You can spend years sitting and staring, willing it to be real. But it’s not.” He set his mug back on the desk and stepped closer once more, staring directly into Ianto’s eyes. “How long have you been here this morning?”  
Ianto shrugged. “Not sure,” he said quietly. Jack nodded.  
“How do you know about it? Is it...from the future?” Ianto asked.  
“No. It came through the rift. There’s only one, as far as I know. I’ve seen it once before, a long time ago. I didn’t have much time to study it then.”  
“Where did you see it? Doesn’t seem alien to me.”  
“It’s not. It’s from a parallel universe. It appeared once in a cabinet the first time I saw it, with the Doctor. We put it back in the cabinet, and it vanished again.”  
“Must have been a large cabinet.”  
Jack smiled a little. He took Ianto’s hands. “Promise me you won’t dwell on whatever you saw. It shows us only what we want to see.”  
Ianto searched Jack’s eyes. He nodded.  
“Good. You can help me move it, when the rest have left tonight. In the meantime, we’ll try to keep them out of here.”  
“They should know not to come in when we’re both in here, anyway. I’ll go distract them with coffee.” Ianto glanced at his watch, trying to calculate how long he’d been there. “Well, not Owen. But he gets his energy from irritating me, these days, so better not keep him waiting.” He shut the door behind himself as he walked out.

Ianto helped Jack move the mirror that night. It was stored in a room not far from the one that had once held a cyber conversion unit. Ianto couldn’t help but notice this, but he didn’t mention it. Instead, on their way out, he said, “You know you don’t have to use moving furniture as an excuse to get me to stay later.”  
“Hey, maybe I actually needed help moving that thing! It’s heavy. Anyway, you always stay later.”  
“Exactly. And you got it into your office earlier somehow. I wondered where that floating, alien two wheeler had gone.”  
“Who notices a missing alien two wheeler around here?”  
Ianto smirked. “Only the best archivists.”

It was late, or very early. Ianto woke wrapped in Jack’s arms, pressed tightly against him, maybe tighter than necessary, in Jack’s small bunk. His mind was immediately on the mirror, as it had been when he’d drifted off. _It doesn’t show anything real. Unless you’re lucky._ He wasn’t dwelling, he tried to tell himself, but he thought of the faint glow that had surrounded him and Jack in the reflection, imagined having a future.  
Jack’s arm moved from around him to search for his hand, which he held. “You’re awake,” he breathed.  
“So are you,” Ianto whispered back.  
Jack seemed to know what he was thinking. “Do you want to talk about it? What you saw?”  
Ianto could just make out the outline of Jack’s features in the darkness. He raised his free hand to Jack’s face, resting it on his cheek. “What did _you_ see?”  
“The first time, or this time?”  
“It changed?”  
“My deepest desire changed, I guess. Sort of. It was the same outcome, but a different way of getting there. The first time, I was killed, same as I am now, but I didn’t come back.” Ianto felt a pang in his chest, but he had more or less expected that answer. “The second time...I died, again. But I was old. I had grown old, after a long life. And…”  
Ianto waited, quiet.  
“And you were there, this time,” Jack finished. Ianto could feel him giving a small smile, and he smiled back.  
“But it’s not real,” Ianto said.  
“Like I said, it doesn’t help to dwell. You’ll get too caught up in wishing and forget to fight for it, or forget the other things you already have and can have that make life worth living. I can’t die. Never will, as far as I see it now. There are other things--people, that make life worth it.”  
Ianto shut his eyes and opened them again. “I saw you, too. We were glowing. We would both get killed, and we’d both wake up again. Every time.”  
Jack pressed his lips to Ianto’s, and Ianto kissed him back.  
“This is real, Ianto,” Jack told him, when they broke apart. “Whatever else, this is real, here and now.”


End file.
